


we were anticipated

by Raylou



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied Relationships, Minor Character Death, Non-Chronological
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 20:28:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7478823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raylou/pseuds/Raylou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Maybe the universe wanted to be seen, to be studied, to be reflected on, so it created sentience. It allowed planets to form, life to emerge, and it waited billions of years for someone to finally look at the stars and say, ‘hey, ever wonder if the universe anticipated us?’”</p>
            </blockquote>





	we were anticipated

“Do you ever wonder if the universe anticipated us?” Pidge asks Hunk as they stargaze on one of the many grassy hills rolling across Planet 143.

The grass beneath her ungloved fingers is soft like wool, thick like woven cotton, and pink like cotton candy—its pastel color only visible when the sun bathes the land with its warmth.

“What do you mean?” Hunk asks softly, his voice more breath than whisper.

“You know that question everyone asks, that if a tree falls and no one’s around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

She hears him nod, hears the grass whisper against each other under his head.

“If stars explode and planets form and no one’s around to witness it, does it exist?” She keeps her words low, thinking that if she speaks too loudly the words will float away and disturb the peace the darkness drapes over their bubble of consciousness. “Maybe the universe wanted to be seen, to be studied, to be reflected on, so it created sentience. It allowed planets to form, life to emerge, and it waited billions of years for someone to finally look at the stars and say, ‘hey, ever wonder if the universe anticipated us?’”

Silence blankets them, and it’s cool like the night air. It sinks into Pidge’s suit and soaks through her skin, filling her with a chill that warms her core.

Hunk sniffles, and Pidge thinks he’s about to sneeze and say they’ve got to get back in the castle because his allergies are kicking, but his breath hitches and she realizes he’s choking his sobs, holding them in his throat.

“T-that was beautiful,” Hunk says.

“But do you ever wonder?” Pidge says, reaching out to touch Hunk’s pinky.

“N-not like that.” He sniffles some more, then wipes his face and noisily sucks in the snot that melted in his nostrils.

Pidge reaches to the star burning red above her head. _I see you_ , she thinks, and she wonders if she’s the only one to acknowledge its existence.

#

matt always wore the same glass frame. when his optometrist recommended he order a new one because the old one was falling apart after too many trips in his dog’s mouth, he bought the same round, thin frame.

#

There isn't a door for Keith to slam open when he storms into the rec room, but his presence tears angry ripples into the silence. Lance is snoozing— _was_ snoozing on the circular couch. He sits up and mumbles a question as he swipes the drool from the corner of his mouth.

“My knife,” Keith seethes and slams his hands on the couch’s backrest. “Where is it?”

Pidge is sitting on the side of the couch facing them. She was upgrading Rover’s firewalls, strengthening its defenses against alien interference. It was easy to work with Lance snoring across from her, exhausted from the heavy conversation they had about the end of the universe.

Now Keith is accusing Lance of stealing it, and Lance is accusing Keith of misplacing it.

“Why’re you blaming me?” Lance holds up his hands in a gesture of total confusion. “Why is it always me? Is it because ‘I don’t know where I put my things so I’ll blame Lance because he’s the perfect scapegoat for everything.’”

“It’s perfectly fitting for someone like you,” Keith snarls.

“Why would I steal your stupid knife?”

“I don’t know! How should I know what’s going on in that hamster-wheeled head of yours?”

This is how most their arguments go.

Eventually they will cut the distance between them to inches and will shout and gesture violently until they’ve run out of things to say, then they will scowl and pull apart, their faces flushed. Lately they’ve been caring too much about little things like Keith’s choice of haircut and Lance’s tendency to fart in closed surroundings.

Pidge has witnessed enough to conclude they come together and rip apart in cycles—like the sun setting and rising.

#

matt was the only one in the family who needed vision correction. he swapped between glasses and contacts based on his mood and outfit, but glasses were his favorite. people were inclined to associate glasses with intelligence, and he viewed his intelligence as his best feature.

pidge wanted to see him in her reflection, so she ordered a pair of fashion glasses with the same frame as matt’s.

#

Shiro isn’t supposed to be drinking from Coran’s No Touchies wine vault. Not even Allura has permission to take from the thousands of multi-color bottles stored on the shelves. Altean counterpart grapes are firm like non-pitted olives and plump like tangerines.

When Altea stood tall as the galaxy’s brightest beacon of prosperity and peace, childlings would crush the grapes for their future bonding ceremony. The bondmates would empty their bottles into a ceremonial bowl, symbolizing their spiritual union.

“I don’t know where hers is,” Shiro tells Pidge as they hide in Shiro’s room, “so I stick to the generic bottles.”

Rover circles above Shiro’s head, probably scanning his intoxication level.

“We might lose them,” Shiro whispers, words starting to slur. “It’s my fault.”

Pidge shakes her head. It’s not his fault. It’s never his fault.

“Say something,” Shiro says, and his eyes are misting over and Pidge doesn’t want to look at his wine-flushed face anymore.

He drinks straight from the bottle. The bottle’s bottom gradually rises to point upward. Shiro tilts his head back, taking every last drop.

It’s not his fault. Nothing is his fault.

“Sometimes I want to drink from her bottle,” Shiro says and studies the dusty bottle in his hands.

Pidge pats her lap and Rover floats onto it, its inner mechanics clicking as she rubs its tips.

“I’m sorry,” Shiro says, but he’s looking at the bottle.

It’s not his fault.

#

matt loved their silly dog. he slipped her food scraps when their parents didn’t look.

#

Pidge is fiddling with Rover’s security system in the rec room. She pauses her work when Lance struts into the room, tying his robe over his nightclothes.

“I got a question for you,” Lance says, swinging his long legs over the couch’s backrest and landing bottom-first on the cushions.

“Yes?” Pidge continues adjusting Rover’s code, typing at a speed that has Lance watching in blank-faced silence.

“Did we ever learn about the end of the universe?” he says, referring to their time at the Garrison.

Yes, they did. It was the concluding unit of their first astronomy class. Introductory material—material that Pidge learned from her father and brother.

“You don’t remember?” Pidge says, adjusting the cables attached to Rover’s exposed ports.

Lance makes a noncommittal grunt.

“It was a while ago,” Pidge says, remembering the shock settling over the lecture hall when their instructor casually described the end of times.

Pidge knew the truth before then, having learned it when she was a child still sleeping with her plush toys. She was one of the few students who took the news as easily as one takes ordinary weather reports. Some rain, some wind, some heat—all natural, inescapable.

Nothing lasts forever. Not the stars, not the planets, not the galaxies, not the universe. Pidge doesn’t think heaven and hell lasts forever either.

“What will happen?” Lance asks.

Pidge looks up at the somber tone in his voice. He lays on his back, hands on his belly, dark eyes gloomily fixed on the vast whiteness of the curved ceiling. He is more sensitive than he lets on, and Pidge knows he is the sort who will ponder the meaning of life when faced with the reality that everything dies.

“One hypothesis is that the universe’s expansion is finite,” Pidge says softly, brushing her fingers against her keyboard as she stares unblinking at her screen of green font. “The galaxies, solar systems, and atoms will tear apart. Spacetime rips. Ultimate death.”

Lance whistles. He looks like a drained husk.

“And another?” Lance says.

“The universe expands until its energy cools. Then it freezes. Everything eventually dies.”

“Another?”

“The universe crunches into a singularity, and then is reborn.”

“Another?”

She doesn’t have more beyond those three; popular hypotheses are finite.

#

matt was a loud kid. stars in his eyes, galaxies in his mouth—he spoke of unexplored worlds that surely existed in alternate realities.

#

They’re about to infiltrate the gladiator stadium, about to free the slaves and grind the Galran forces to space dust. Nothing will be left when Voltron is done.

“Understood?” Allura says as the team splits into their positions.

The games are about to begin. Pidge knows her father and brother are here. She feels it. She knows they’re alive. Her heart grows. She thinks she’s never felt such confidence in battle. This is what Keith felt, she thinks, when he was the top student at the Garrison. When he had Shiro behind him, motivating him to fight, fight, fight. Become the best.

#

matt was the gem of the family until pidge was born. they both became gems. they were treasured.

#

Keith is still knifeless when Pidge next sees him; therefore, he is fuming and trailing a death storm from his heels. He’s dressed down in pants and his gray t-shirt and he’s heading south, toward the training room.

She waits for him to disappear behind the curved castle wall, then she and Rover follow him. They go up the winding stairs to the spectator platform along the wall adjacent to the control room. Pidge sits in front of the protective glass wall. Rover lands on top her head, and she plucks it off and sets it next to her. It powers down into rest mode. She rubs one of its sides as Keith activates his bayard and shouts for a Level 3 simulation.

He fights like a flame, burning low as he tracks his opponent’s first moves, waiting for the opportunity to charge in and burst into a firestorm. The simulated attacker expertly wields a boa staff with electrically-charged ends, but Keith outsmarts it, dodging, parrying, and hacking until he forces a small opening and slices through its chest.

The simulation disperses. He shouts for Level 4. The attacker manifests—then disappears as the training door slides open for Lance.

Lance says holds up Keith’s sheathed knife.

Keith stays in his crouched fighting stance and eyes Lance like he’s considering using him as a replacement for the dissolved Level 4 attacker.

 _Well,_ Lance seems to say, still holding it out.

Keith deactivates his bayard. He walks to Lance, anger in each step, but he’s noticeably calmer as he takes the dagger.

They talk, and Keith’s posture relaxes.

Thus the cycle ends—and begins.

They will argue, they will forgive each other, they will laugh together, they will argue, they will forgive each other, they will laugh together, they will argue….

#

matt was a child with the brain and posture of a grown man.

#

Matt is so quiet. He rests in his healing pod, skin pale as snow—whiter than any white man should look, Lance comments. Keith slaps him, screams at him to grow up and use common sense. Lance screams back, says that if Keith had followed Allura’s orders Matt wouldn’t be in a coma and Dr. Holt wouldn’t still be missing and Shiro wouldn’t be blaming himself for everything that went wrong and Hunk wouldn’t be distancing himself from everyone because he thinks it’s his fault Zarkon got away with Dr. Holt and is torturing and experimenting and brainwashing him

Pidge wouldn’t be mute, her voice locked in her throat, her words stolen by the horror of—of—of—

#

matt. short for matthew.

“if you can’t explain a complex theory in a few sentences, you don’t know it as well as you think,” he had said.

#

“So, everything’s going to end?” Lance finally says. “What about the afterlife? Is it tied to this universe? Is it another dimension?”

She wants to be snarky, to ask if he thinks anybody knows what happens after the body dies and brain shuts down and the soul is freed.

“Will the dead be disturbed?” Lance wonders out loud.

Pidge says nothing and lets him talk to himself. He grows tired, weighted by the implications of nothing being infinite, and turns onto his side and sleeps.

#

KEITH WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, LANCE SCREAMS. KEITH’S GONE OFF AFTER ZARKON, WHO WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE HERE. VOLTRON WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE HERE. THEY HAVE MORE IN COMMON THAN EXPECTED, ZARKON SAYS. KEITH SCREAMS, THEY HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON. HE SCREAMS AND SCREAMS AND SCREAMS AND FIGHTS AND FIGHTS AND HE’S GONE BERSERK AND KATIE SEES MATT AND HER FATHER IN THE CROWD OF GLADIATORS POURING FROM THE STADIUM. THEY’RE RUNNING, RUNNING, RUNNING. KATIE RUNS FOR THEM. SHE’S ALMOST THERE. SHE CAN SCOOP THEM UP, TAKE THEM AWAY. SHE’S SUPPOSED TO MONITOR THE HACKED SURVEILLANCE FEED, KEEP THE CONNECTION TO THE CASTLE, BUT MATT IS THERE AND SO IS HER FATHER AND IT HAS BEEN TOO LONG.

#

“you’re going to do great things when you grow up,” he had said.

“i’m already here,” she had retorted, tiny hands on her hips.

#

Pidge is eight-years old and she’s playing dolls and action figures with Matt. They’re recreating man’s first visit to the moon. Matt has a tiny American flag taped to a toothpick, and he sticks it onto the white décor pillow they’re pretending is the moon.

“That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” Matt says.

“I heard he flubbed it. He meant to say ‘a man,’” Pidge says.

“Really? It sounds better without the ‘a,’ more universal.”

Pidge flicks the American flag. “When I take my first step off Earth, I’ll say ‘that’s another step for man, another leap for mankind.’”

#

the healing pod couldn’t replace his arm and leg. the shock killed him, she thought.

#

Voltron hasn’t formed in weeks.

#

Shiro won’t stop drinking. Allura begs him to stop. Hunk upgrades the vault door with Pidge’s help.

Lance has stopped screaming at Keith. Keith won’t speak. Pidge thinks muteness is contagious.

#

“Y’all ready for this?” Lance says, and Pidge thinks that’s a reference to the pop culture of the 2000s.

She hates pop culture, but today she embraces the noodle of irritation that wriggles into her gut. She loves pop culture. Loves Lance, Hunk, Keith, Shiro, Allura, Coran. She loves the castle. She loves her lion. She loves Voltron.

“Can I say it?” she says, hope bubbling in her voice.

“Go ahead,” Shiro says gently.

#

“Team Voltron, _GO!_ ”


End file.
